Getting out of Depression Part 3

Welcome back to this last part of “getting out of depression.” This is by no means the end-all and cure-all advice to depression. Everyone experiences depression in different ways and because our egos have a tendency to react to life’s trauma we find ourselves in various different places. What works for some may not work for others. It’s also important to note that I was never diagnosed with a mental illness and was never medicated for depression. If you take medication for depression, make sure you double check with your therapist or doctor before undertaking any new tactics against depression.

Remember that this is my journey I am willingly sharing with you, in the hopes that some of you may find courage and power from within to start believing in yourselves again.

I was feeling just about the lowest I had ever felt in my life. Ill, debilitated and with little hope for a full recovery. With only my mind working from time to time, I was forced to stay in bed. This over a 4 year period.

You may have heard that people who have given up one sensory ability such as hearing or seeing, develop increased abilities in other departments. I have a friend who has been deaf since she was one year old. Today all someone needs to do is slightly knock on the window by her entrance door and no matter where she is inside her house, she can feel the vibration of the fingernail tapping on the window on her body. It’s quite amazing.

When I felt as though I had nothing left but my mind, it was my mind that developed to heights I never knew possible. I remember it being frustrating because I had all these ideas and wishes bubble to the surface within me, yet I was housing inside a body that was about to let go and die. It was utterly frustrating.

One day I just agreed to my death. I gave in and I let go. It was then when I threw in the towels, threw up my hands and was willing to “slaughter the child within” that a new flame of inspiration was ignited.

“What am I so afraid of?” I asked myself.

Dying was inevitable and obviously in front of me. I was not afraid of dying anymore, it seemed to have become my early lot. But what IF I was not dying and there WAS indeed a way out from this lion’s den? What would I be afraid of then? If I were to continue to live, what were my fears?

What are your fears today?

Here is the first thing I did, a little trick that may take a guts, and if you can muster up the courage to do this exercise and then tackle these things one by one, your life will change for the better without a doubt.

1. First make a list of all your fears.
2. Then number them with your worst and all-time biggest fear being number one.
3. Make a decision to tackle each fear one by one, until that three-headed monster has been conquered.
4. Then immerse yourself in your fear until you love the thing you once fear most.

I personally decided to tackle the first three biggest fears together at the same time rather than picking some of the smaller fears at the end of the list. It took me 1 year to overcome these three fears and then a miracle happened!

My all time biggest fear was public speaking. I had attempted to start two businesses before where speaking was necessary – I utterly failed because I would have rather crawled up and died somewhere than to get up in front of a crowd.

My second biggest fear was to leave my husband and become a statistic, a single mom with a child who was disappointed in her mom that she didn’t “stick it out to the end.” I was afraid to break my promise “until death do us part” and to feel like a failure for the rest of my life because I broke that promise.

My third fear was to fly in an airplane. Yes, I know it sounds strange or funny to those of you who fly a lot or go on vacation a lot. There was a time in my younger years where I wanted to become a flight attendant. Once my daughter was born, however, this desire parted and instead turned into fear. I also had a couple of bad experiences and I’m still surprised the plane didn’t go down or shatter to pieces during those experiences. Not pleasant and definitely fear-inducing.

I gave myself 2 years to overcome these fears. I not only overcame them, but I learned to LOVE their opposites. Once I decided to tackle the fear of public speaking by signing up at a local Toastmaster’s chapter I started to slowly but surely be more at ease with the fact that public speaking may just be my calling. And it was and it is. Today I am asked to speak at new-thought churches, I taught at the Learning Annex for over 3 years, I give radio interviews and I spoke with Robert Kyiosaki in front of 1,500 people. Who would have known my biggest fear would become my all-time biggest love?

Overcoming the fear of flying in an airplane was easier than overcoming the fear of public speaking, yet they were intertwined. I decided to book 8 airplane rides in the first 12 month period. My first flight was one hour away, my second flight two hours, and so on. Remember my end-all goal was to love to fly and the only way I could do this was to either find a happy reason at the end of the trip or to meet great people along the way. I did both. By the 6th plane ride my fear had disappeared and turned into excitement instead.

And last but not least, overcoming the fear of hurting my husband and my daughter, leaving him and breaking my promise “until death do us part.” This was a big one because it seemed to have the biggest, most unknown consequences and affected not just me and my husband, it affected my daughter. I knew what I had in my dead marriage (which was nothing), and no matter how dead it was it was all I knew and it was all I seemed to have gotten from my parents (nothing). Going out there into the unknown was frightening and scary. My goal was to part as best friends at least. And we did. We let each other go in peace and with much love in our hearts and we were truly best friends the day he moved out. In fact, we went shopping together for a new place for him and I helped him move that infamous day. We continued having dinner once a week as a family and in many ways he became my best friend only after he moved out. Today I have been divorced almost four years and they are by far some of the happiest four years of my life. Sometimes I wonder what I was so scared of.

Nelson Mandela gave a speech in 1994 that says the following: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

The biggest miracle happened once I learned to LOVE these three biggest fears. Remember there was an entire list of fears that I still needed to tackle? Once these first three fears had been tackled I went back to the list of fears, only to realize that all of the other fears now looked like little pebbles. They were not even fears anymore! I was free and empowered by simply approaching my three biggest fears. All else fell away automatically.

I’d like to encourage you to look at your fears, tackle them and to turn them into love instead. Start by making a list of all your fears, then decide which fear(s) you want to tackle first. Take action by learning to love the fears, because you may be surprised like I was and discover that your fears turn out to be part of your purpose here on earth!

Here is to your success…